Connectivity (i.e., wireless connection to the Internet and remote clients) has been contemplated for household appliances for some time.
Recently, the term “Internet of Things” has come to represent the idea that household articles of all kinds can be connected to the public Internet. Once connected, such articles can report various data to server and client devices. For example, one idea is to connect ‘smart’ light bulbs to household WAN (Wireless Area Network). Each light bulb would have a microprocessor, memory, some means of detecting or interpreting status, power, and a wireless connection. Using these components, the light bulb can report its status, can be polled, etc.
The concept is broad, and generally is only distinct from household connectivity in general (e.g., computers, cable boxes, media devices, and the like) in that the Internet of Things articles are not normally considered to include sufficient computing resources or communications to meaningfully connect to the public Internet. A conventional refrigerator would not connect to the Internet; the same device as an “Internet of Things” article would include computational, sensor, and communications hardware and sufficient software to become an entity addressable remotely and locally; the expectation being that this Internet Fridge could report its various states (power consumption or the like) and respond to remote commands (increase or decrease internal temperature).
Household mobile robots may also become “Internet of Things” articles. In some ways, household mobile robots are a distinct species within this set—generally, speaking, the autonomy of the household mobile robot sets it apart from other appliances. No other appliance performs in an unpredictable and variable environment. No other appliance makes a multiplicity of autonomous decisions based on tens or hundreds of sensor inputs in order to achieve mission completion.
A dishwasher—even an Internet of Things dishwasher—does not know anything about is contents and runs the equivalent of simple scripts controlling motors and pumps, potentially interrupted by simple clog or other sensors. An iRobot® Roomba® vacuuming robot, during the course of its mission, may detect its own state in numerous ways, and may flexibly escape from challenging situations in the household, as well as engage in predictive and planning activities.
There exist many unmet challenges in the integration of the rich and autonomous behavior of a household mobile robot with the core concepts of “Internet of Things” connectivity.